“Quite literally,” Rina said. “So you are not completely isolated.”
He looked slightly embarrassed, which intrigued her. And when he spoke it was in a tone of reluctant admission.
“What news I seek is usually of Trios.” That gladdened her. “You are here to find her?”
“Both of them, since I am sure they are together.”
“Sent to rein in the children, Rina?” He gave a short laugh. “It seems just yesterday you were a child yourself, trapped in a battle when you should have been home playing.”
“The Evening Star was long my home,” she reminded him. “And I was no child. But if I was, so were you, being all of five years older than I. Have we not had this discussion before?”
“Countless times,” he agreed softly. “It was my only defense, Rina.”
Something about the way he said it made her breath catch. “Defense against what?”
He looked away. “Dax is worried about his daughter?”
For a moment she didn’t want to accept the blatant change of subject. But she’d seen him shut down before, and knew she would get nowhere by prodding at him.
“They did not part under the best of terms.” She left it at that; she did not think Dax would appreciate her telling the whole story, even to Tark.
“I can imagine. I still have trouble picturing Dax as a parent, especially of a girl.”
“She is a woman now. Which only complicates matters further.”
He looked back at her then. “It always does.”
“Bark-hound,” she said, without force. This was too much like their old days of teasing, and she was enjoying it. “It is men—in this case Dax—who complicate things. Shaina is eminently practical.”
“Perhaps,” he said quietly, “I wasn’t speaking of Shaina.”
And there it was again, that crazed swooping feeling, as if she had just dived off the cliff above Lake Geron, headed for the cool crystal water.
She tried to regroup, grasped for something sane to say. “Dax feels about all this celebratory fuss just as you do.”
Tark grimaced. “You mean he would prefer to be somewhere else?”
“He would prefer a nice weekend at the ruins of Ossuary than to stand around with that statue.”
He laughed. Each time was better, easier than the last, and she liked the fact that she was able to get that from him.
“Why do you not have your own?” she asked.
“My own what?”
“Statue.” He blinked. “Don’t look so surprised. You were as much a hero of this war as anyone. So why are you not up there next to Dax and Califa?”
“There was talk,” he admitted with clear reluctance.
“But?”
“My parents did not approve. And they are still of some influence.”
They were still alive, then. But puzzling. Rina frowned. “Did not approve of a tribute to their own son?”
“They do not approve of war.”
She stared at him. “They preferred enslavement?”
“They thought we should have . . . negotiated.”
“With the Coalition?” It burst from her incredulously. “Do they know no history?”
He shrugged. “As always, they believe what they choose to believe.”
She waved a hand sharply, as if swiping at a zipbug. “I stand by my words. To have a son such as you and not be proud beyond measure is more than I can conceive of, and I’ve seen many cultures on many worlds.”
For a moment he just stared at her, then he looked quickly away, downward, as if her words had moved him more than he wished to show. She hoped that was true.
“I heard, long ago, about the children of the king and the flashbow warrior,” he said, in that tone she now knew meant he was changing the subject yet again. Something he’d apparently become expert at. “That they are . . . destined.”
“That, I have found, depends upon the person you ask.”
“How about the parties involved?” he asked, and they were back to wry humor once more.
“I think what is supposed to happen will happen. If they are left alone to discover their own path.”
He looked at her then, steadily. “No wonder Dax sent you. They must feel close to you, since you’re closer in age.”
She wanted to protest, fiercely, and that startled her. Then she realized she only wanted him to stop painting her as so young. She was not, not any longer. She was a woman, yet it was as if he remembered only the youth she had been when they had met.
And she wondered why he seemed so determined to continue to see her that way.
She heard the midday strike of the bell. The original bell, which had been destroyed in the very first Coalition attack decades ago, had been replaced after the Arellian battle was won. The current one was a gift from Trios, etched with images of the two worlds and arcs between them to symbolize the bonds formed during the rebellion that had freed them. Tark had been the one to spark that rebellion, leading raid after raid against the Coalition forces left behind.
He stood suddenly. Instinctively, she rose with him.
“There’s a meeting,” he said.
“Of?”
“Those who see,” he said.
She assumed he meant the watchers, those who saw what he saw in the suspicious presence of ranking members of the Coalition in various places in the system.
“Is there news?”
“I do not know. It was already planned. The current crowds provide a good way to remain unnoticed by those who fervently disagree.” He studied her for a moment. “If you did not have other obligations, you could join us.”
“Would I be welcome?”
“You are remembered among us, as well, Rina. And those who did not know you would only be wary until I explain it is you who secured the audience with King Dare.”
His words pleased her. She hadn’t thought about glory or reputation in those days of battle, only about the fight, but she was glad she hadn’t been forgotten by those she’d fought alongside. It hit her suddenly, how deeply he must feel it, not just that he was not welcomed, but that his heroism had not only been forgotten but denied. And worse, not just by the people who knew no better, but by the people he had fought for and alongside. Anger stirred in her, so fierce she knew if she unleashed it, it would become fury.
“Then I would like to come.”
“But you have your task here,” he said.
She reined in her rage. “I will tend to that. It is important, but not burningly urgent.”
She didn’t add that she thought it might do Dax good to worry a bit longer. She would talk to Shaina, try to get through to her that what he had done had been out of immeasurable love, but that didn’t mean she agreed with it. She knew he had wanted to protect his child, but Shaina was full-grown now, and as tough as she needed to be. And as reckless and hardheaded as her father, Rina thought with an inward smile. She could wait a bit.
“Then come,” Tark said, “and we will find out if there is news.”
She didn’t hesitate or speak, she simply rose and followed, grateful he trusted her enough to ask her. Bright Tarkson’s trust was not easily won, nor to be taken lightly. Then or now.
Chapter 19
“YOU WERE RIGHT. It was necessary.”
Shaina turned at Cub’s words. Night fell earlier here on the mountain, where the peaks cast their shadows, and one side of his face was thrown into sharp contrast by the angle of the afternoon sun. For an instant she almost didn’t recognize him, the stark, chiseled angle of his face and jaw were so strong, so uncompromisingly male that it nearly stopped her breath.
It took her a moment to fend off all the things that she didn’t want to think about yet, including the last thing he’d said to her before
they’d started off again. It took a moment longer for her to recall his words and school her voice to evenness.
“Him, you mean? Behind us?” she asked finally. She had sensed their follower’s presence a while ago, but had said nothing because he had stayed far enough back. She only knew because that was the kind of thing she always knew. Well, always knew as long as her head was straight. “Yes. Apparently he did not take the bait.”
“Not it?”
“Yes.”
“Close?”
“Back.”
“Sightline?”
“Yes.”
They fell into their personal shorthand way of conversing easily. That at least hadn’t changed. It was just everything else that was shifting under her feet. And it wasn’t just Cub reacting to her leap into using her womanhood as a tactic—it was her, too, looking at him differently. Seeing not the boy who had been her lifetime companion, but the man he had become.
“The old man, Theon?” he asked.
She tried to focus. “No. An unknown.”
“More thuggers?”
“Only one. And he feels . . . different.”
“Threat?”
She hesitated. Closed her eyes, reached out . . . “I can’t be sure, he’s too far back,” she finally said, “but he’s different.” She shrugged to indicate she couldn’t explain it any more than that. And rather than pressing her, Cub merely nodded, accepting. She hadn’t realized until this moment how much she treasured that.
“Perhaps he’s so far behind because he did take your bait.”
“Perhaps.”
Cub was never afraid to admit he’d been wrong, and he always found the best way to make up for it. But then, it happened rarely. At least, in comparison to she herself, who was always trying to make up for some scrape or other.
He looked ahead, scanning. Then he gestured to an outcropping of rock some distance away, a jagged prominence that jutted out, forcing the path to wrap around it. She nodded. It looked like a likely enough spot, giving a full field of view of the path both up and down the mountain. It was too early to stop for the night, but she didn’t question him. Cub always had reason.
He started up the path ahead of her. She followed, watching his long, easy stride. She often heard him compared to the beautiful Arellian steeds, with their golden coat and flowing manes, and the extravagance of the estimation nearly always made her groan. And yet she couldn’t deny the truth of it: he was beautiful, and as strong and graceful as they were. Only now she was focusing on that entirely too much. The flexing of fit muscle, the length of his stride, the way the slight breeze lifted the golden mane of his hair, so different from her own dark strands, seemed to be poking at her in a way she found most unsettling.
No. Annoying, that’s what it was.
She’d always teased him when she heard girls giggling and whispering as they passed, giving him countless sideways looks, some shyly looking away, other, bolder ones smiling at him and waving, or even approaching. Everyone on Trios knew their prince on sight. While before he was officially invested with his title he was not required to follow the royal tradition of speaking to any citizen who wished it, he did so anyway. And it mattered not if they were young, female, and attractive, he gave the same courteous attention to men, to the old and gray, to all. She could not fault him there.
And what she felt at those times when the female was lovely and feminine in all the ways her rambunctious self was not, she told herself sternly, was not jealousy. Nor would she admit to satisfaction that he was no more than polite to them.
Her newly awakened feelings made the very thought of him linked with one of those simpering females, perhaps even bonded with one of them, churn her stomach. And she couldn’t convince herself the feeling would pass.
She hated this. Why had everything had to get so tangled?
He led the way up a crumbled trail to the top of the rock outcropping. Even here he moved with grace and skill, as if born to it. She felt an odd sensation rising in her, and again felt as if her world had been tilted somehow. This was Cub, the one person she knew almost as well as she knew herself—why was she feeling so off balance?
Although their parents never spoke of the talk that had been rampant after they’d been born, there was always someone who could not resist teasing them about their destiny. Rina had once said, rather sourly, that there were advantages to the state of war, one being that no one had much time to dwell on such frivolous things. Somehow Rina always seemed to find the right thing to say.
And what would Rina have to say about this new bit of confusion? She’d confessed to Shaina that the kind of love between her parents, or the king and queen, frightened her a little. Shaina had laughed at the idea of the intrepid Rina afraid of anything. And Rina had laughed at herself when she’d added, “But it seems pointless to settle for anything less. And that’s the paradox.”
And it was those words that had crystallized Shaina’s own feelings on the matter of mating and bonding. It was all a paradox, and ridiculously complicated. She couldn’t imagine opening herself to anyone in the way that would require. She had her hidden places, secret thoughts and wishes no one else knew, nor would she wish them to know.
Except Cub. He knew it all. He always had. They had never hidden anything from each other.
And that way lay danger, thinking of him in connection with those other thoughts.
“Are you all right?”
Cub’s almost sharp words snapped her out of her silly reverie. She realized he had topped the rock and was leaning back to offer his hand. She bit her tongue to prevent a snapped “I don’t need any help” from escaping. He knew that. Often enough she was in the lead, and the one to do the same. He was only offering as first up, not because he thought she couldn’t do it.
Saying nothing about his question, she took his hand and pulled herself up. His hold was solid, and his balance never wavered as she went up and over. She was thankful that he let it go and didn’t ask her about her continually distracted state.
The rock gave them the view Cub had selected it for. High ground, with a sight line both up and down the trail for hundreds of yards. There was no sign of their follower, but Shaina knew he was still there. He could be simply another traveler, but that he was keeping out of sight bothered her.
“Are we staying?”
“For a bit,” he said. “We can talk.”
She grimaced inwardly, fearing he was going to bring up the strangeness that had sprung up between them.
He dropped down to sit on a smooth section of the rock, facing back the way they had come, pulled his knees up in front of him, and rested his elbows on them. Shaina chose not to comment on the fact that he had chosen the direction from which they were being followed for himself to watch. Instead she dropped down facing the other direction, close enough that they were able to lean their backs against each other. It meant they could not see each other’s faces, but she wasn’t sure that was not a good thing at the moment.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“When do you not?” she retorted. “You are always thinking.”
“Yes,” he answered, mildly given the snippiness of her answer. Which had the effect it always did, making her feel chagrin. She had merely been trying to avoid what she feared he wanted to speak of, not to mock him.
“You have your father’s patience.”
“Without which he would never have survived.”
“I know that.” She let out a sigh. “And I have none.”
“I received a double measure, since my mother has it as well.”
She couldn’t help smiling at that. The queen indeed had it as well. Often it had been Shaylah she had turned to for deeper counsel, on things she didn’t wish to discuss with her mother, things she needed a woman’s view on. In fact, it had b
een Shaylah who had first called her beautiful, a declaration that had unsettled her more than pleased her.
“It is a good trait, patience,” she said quietly, wishing to make amends. “Worthy of—and necessary for—a king.”
“Just as courage and spirit are necessary for a warrior,” he said, rather pointedly. “It’s as well you have both in abundance.”
Warrior. There was the other sore spot she’d been nursing. She wasn’t sure which she wanted to talk about less. She stared up the mountain, where the shadows seemed to grow longer even as she looked.
“You have been thinking much yourself.” His voice was quiet. She didn’t bother to deny it, he knew her too well. In fact no one knew her as well as Cub.
“And it’s annoying,” she said dryly. “I don’t know why you do it.”
“For the same reason the kingbird flies. It is my nature.”
He had that, too, she thought. That quiet sort of wisdom that didn’t seem like much until he somehow understood the nature of something—or someone—better than anyone else. In that again, he had the best of both his parents, that thing that made them beloved of their people.
She had gradually become aware of the growing warmth on her back, where they touched. It was comforting, as any touch between friends, but other thoughts continued to intrude and disconcert her.
“I know sometimes you wish I would not think so much, and just do.”
“And if you did,” she said, “we would wind up in even more trouble than usual.”
He laughed. She felt it through that connection between them before she even heard it.
“Honesty is, as always, another of your admirable traits.” The laughter echoed in his words.
“There are those who would say I am excessively so.”
“Then they have not come to treasure it as I have.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, only knew that his words again stirred those odd, unwanted feelings.
“Perhaps,” Cub said, as casually as if he were merely making an observation about the clouds that were rolling in, “your own honesty is why you feel so strongly about your father’s choice to hide your destiny.”
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